24. Sailing along and a new program begins

This has been a busy week.

The mentors and mentees met up again and all is going well with the program. Sometimes it is good to be reminded that these are moody adolescents, very normal ........ one mentor battled this week as his mentee was in one of those moods. The key is not to take it personally. Another mentor was tearing her hair out in frustration at the laid back attitude of her mentee, but she held it all together and knows that things must happen at the pace of the mentee. We chatted a little about this during the debrief and ideas were shared. I continue to encourage the mentors to promote the email component of the program, but a couple of relationships are hindered by mentees not having access to email from home. How much we take this for granted in the 21st Century! The mentees seem reluctant to go and use the school library computers to email their mentors and to check messages, probably because the peer pressure impact kicks in again. I encourage the mentors to keep going. There are a couple of other issues going on and it is great to see how the mentoring partnership could assist resolve some of these matters. As one mentor is beginning to discover, as she is at the school consistently week in and week out, the connection with her mentee, who might lack that consistent support and encouragement at home, is strengthening and he is even initiating some of the conversations!!! A number of mentees have asked their mentors to assist with Resume writing, a topic that is covered in our Student Manual.

Monday night was the first night of training for our second program which we are launching this year in Penrith. As mentioned elsewhere, the recruiting process has been difficult and I have just not had the available hours to do a more effective job. However, I am beginning to find that the churches are SLOWLY getting on board, highlighted by the active participation of a Pastor in this latest program. He is doing the training and will mentor a student and I am hoping that his involvement will result in more of his congregation becoming involved as the program grows in that area. So, wonderful to greet 13 new potential mentors at the training, which included 4 men. I hope all return for the second week - that's always the interesting moment!

Next Tuesday night I begin the training of the third group of mentors as we prepare to run our third program in the Hawkesbury area. Despite considerable community newspaper support, we have not been able to recruit the numbers we would like, but have decided to go ahead with the 7 or 8 mentors who have indicated their availability. It would be lovely to have a miracle and see another 4 or 5 arrive!!

Busy times, indeed ...... :-)

23. Positive progress

The second meeting of the new school year was a positive one for most of the mentors and their mentees. More and more sharing of personal stuff is taking place, together with the exploration of possible careers in the future and what will be required to get there.

A couple of relationships that appeared to be hitting a wobble are back on track and looking very positive. In one case we have rescheduled the meeting time so the mentee can attend a specific class she does not want to miss. Flexibility is the key!!

A number of mentors are assisting their mentees on the journey of finding some work experience which they are allowed to do this year. This means they can miss school for a number of days during the year to experience the opportunity of spending some time at a place of work which intetrests them. In some cases it might result in students wanting to head out of school at the end of this year to gain an apprenticeship. In other cases students are already saying they feel they should complete their schooling before heading into the workforce. Every case is unique.

I am also promoting the use of the email facility, as this continues to result in some wonderful correspondence.

This week sees the launch of the mentor training for one of our new programs being launched in 2008 ....... more on that later.

22. Ongoing recruitment issues

We had another article in the Penrith community newspaper this week promoting the mentoring program. It was superbly written, yet I only received two phone calls as a result of the article in an area with a population of 160,000! It will be interesting to see if I have any more. Both callers were men - and we still need more men - but both were uncertain if they would be able to get off work to participate. I offered to speak to employers, as I have all the global research showing how mentors benefit so much from a positive mentoring relationship and the subsequent spin-off for the company/organisation/business they are working for. This is going to be an important issue to keep throwing into the mix when youth mentoring is discussed in any circles.

I contacted a local church situated near the one school where we hope to launch a program shortly and popped around to visit the Pastor. He was very receptive to the idea of approaching a few people in his congregation to explore the possibility of them becoming GR8 MATES mentors. If he can encourage 4 or 5 folk to participate, we will be well on our way to having the ideal number for this new program. Tomorrow I will attempt to visit two more local churches, one recommended by the Pastor and see what I can do. This particular Pastor is also a member of a gathering of local church ministers who meet every couple of months. I asked if I could have 10 minutes at one of these meetings to talk about the program. This looks likely to happen.

The first night of training for the program in the Penrith school is due to start on the 18 February. I met with the Principal today and we agreed to push ahead even if we don't have the full quota of mentors. Better to start small and then hope that, once the program is up and running, the momentum will pick up, mentors will spread the word amongst their networks and we will be able to recruit more effectively.

A new local community newspaper is running an article in the Hawkesbury area tomorrow. Again, I will be interested to see if there are any phone calls, though I think I will be visiting a couple more churches in that area early next week ! The mentor training in that area starts on the 26th February, so there is a little more time, but not much - great to have a magic wand?!!! :-)

21. The new school year is under way

A very interesting gathering on Tuesday, as mentors and mentees met up for the first time since the Christmas break. Some of the mentees were enthusiastic, focused and keen to move forward. Some had acquired part-time jobs during the holidays. A few were still battling to settle back into school, a couple making mutterings about wanting to leave. This is the very reason why they are a part of the mentoring program. The challenge for the mentors is to encourage their mentees back on track to maximise their time at school, especially as there are some very small signs of an economy that might become a little more difficult in the months ahead. So, these youngsters would be well advised to work hard at school, even to stay for their final two years, acquire more employability skills and be better prepared for life after school. Relationships between boys and girls are also featuring in early discussions and I have been impressed at the sensitve ways mentors are discussing these matters. There was some good sharing during the debrief and, thereafter, via email and in chats with individual mentors, we explored a variety of strategies to consider in encouraging mentees to reach their potential. We should have an interesting few weeks ahead.

We saw the effects of negative peer pressure and, after 45 minutes, I could see how one mentor had already helped her mentee start looking at the decisions he was making and the reality of the consequences of some of his decisions.

This is a time during adolescence when one does notice the changes taking place in their thinking, planning (or lack of!), relationship issues etc. Some mentors acknowledged seeing these changes in the space of two months. One mentee has shed 9kg over the holidays, looks and feels good and is more motivated than at any time last year - an interesting mentoring relationship to observe. I would not be surprised to see this mentoring relationship continue well beyond the formal closure of the program.

During the holidays all the mentors received their mentor training accreditation letters from TAFE (Tertiary provider). I celebrated the occasion by presenting them all with special Certificates officially acknowledging them as mentors in the program now that they have been past the probationary period. We took a group photograph which I emailed to them all in the afternoon. Acknowledging and rewarding mentors is something I feel very strongly about, yet it's the cost of small gifts that is one of the first items to be slashed from a mentoring budget when the finances are tight. Fortunately, most mentors are volunteers who are unlikely to expect anything in return for their time, so it is not a big deal.

I also met with the school IT folk to look at ways to tweak the ementoring component of the program. At the moment the supervisors can't read any attachments. One mentor erred in placing a private email address when corresponding with the mentee during the holidays. This is not allowed and is a safety and security issue. We want the supervisor to be able to access a message like this and delete the address (in this case). Obviously the mentor would be informed immediately. How important a pilot project is, allowing us to experiment a little, make mistakes etc.

The mentors will be focusing on career options etc, during the next few months. Students in schools here will start selecting their subject choices for their final two years of school between May and September this year. It makes a great difference if one has some idea of a career and knows what subjects are needed and this will be part of the mentoring journey. Having said that, where students are not feeling good about being back at school, the mentors will focus more on empathising and having discussions about choices and the consequences of those choices, maybe even doing some role-playing around this. The Student Manual is expected to be used quite a bit during the next few months.

Flexibility when running a program is important. I have one mentor whose circumstances have changed, making it not possible for her to meet her mentee when all the other mentors are gathering. We have sat with her mentee and agreed another time. The two of them have a positive connection and were making good progress at the end of last year, so it seemed important to do our utmost to accommodate the mentor's request for a change of days. However, she will miss the camaraderie with the other mentors each week, the debrief times and so on. I will have the added responsibility of ensuring that she is being supervised and supported, but it's a small price to pay to see a successful relationship continue.